Maritime Bank listing rejected

Hanoi (VNA) – The Vietnam Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Maritime Bank) has
failed to get approval from shareholders to trade its shares on the stock
exchanges.

At the bank’s
annual shareholder meeting held on May 26, 97 percent of shareholders
disapproved of the proposal put forward by the bank’s board to list shares on
one of the three major stock exchanges.

The three
exchanges in question are the HCM Stock Exchange (HoSE), Hanoi Stock Exchange
(HNX) and Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM).

The bank
submitted its application for share listing to the Vietnam Securities
Depository (VSD) in January 2017 and had to provide additional documents to
comply with VSD requirements. Maritime Bank reapplied to VSD in early April.

Shares of
Maritime Bank have been traded on the Over-The-Counter (OTC) market since June
26, 2009 under code MSB. The bank’s share price has fallen from a starting
level of 19,200 VND (85 US cents) per share to around 4,000 VND per share.

According to the
bank’s management board, the price of bank shares has remained low due to the
downward trend of the economy in general and the banking sector in particular.

The bank also
plans to raise its pre-tax profit slightly to 165 billion VND from last year’s
figure of 164 billion VND. Maritime Bank plans to make dividend payouts at a
rate of 5 percent for 2017 and zero for 2016.

Tran Xuan Quang,
vice chairman of the bank’s standing management board, said at the meeting that
Maritime Bank would continue provisioning its bad debts in order to make sure
the bank’s operations are secure.

Maritime Bank
expects its pre-provision profit for 2017 will reach 2.2 trillion VND and it
projects to handle 7 trillion VND worth of bad debts and maintain a bad debt
ratio of below 3 percent by the end of 2017. — VNA